Page 70 of Grim

Grim

The hallway felt wrong.

Too bright. Too clean. Too quiet for a night like this. The air held the metallic bite of adrenaline, like the tension from the parking lot attack had followed him inside.

Grim’s boots hit the floor harder than he meant, each step echoing down the corridor. He could feel the mission closing in around him, the weight of it, the precision it demanded, the cold focus he had to slip into like a second skin.

He could feel himself shutting down.

He hated it. He needed it. He didn’t know how to be anything else.

Brick and Ghost stood guard outside his door, shoulders squared and eyes sharp. They looked like they were carved out of the same stone the club was built on.

“You good?” Brick asked.

“No,” Grim said. “Stay here.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He pushed open the door.

Sophia stood by the window, wrapped in one of his hoodies, staring out at the dark lot like she was watching for ghosts. The moonlight caught the curve of her cheek, the tension in her shoulders she was trying so damn hard to hide.

She looked small in his clothes. She looked strong in her stance. She looked like the only thing in the world that could break him.

She turned when she heard him.

Relief flickered across her face, quick, fragile, real.

Then it vanished.

Because she saw it, the wall slamming down behind his eyes.

Something inside him clicked over — a cold, familiar shift he hadn’t felt this sharply in years. His breathing leveled out, slow and controlled. His pulse steadied. The edges of the room sharpened, every sound separating into clean, trackable layers. The overhead lights flickered once, and for a split second, the hallway didn’t look like his bedroom at all — it looked like a deployment hallway again, concrete and dust and the metallic hum of generators.

Lock it down. Feel later. Mission first.

His shoulders squared. His jaw locked. His eyes went flat, the warmth draining out until only calculation remained. He wasn’t Grim, the man who held her while she shook. He was Hale, the soldier who survived by shutting every door inside himself. He couldn’t afford softness. Not now. Not with what was coming.

The distance he was already putting between them. The way he was slipping into mission-mode, shutting her out to survive the next few hours.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move toward her. Didn’t trust himself to.

He just said, “I need to get ready.”

Her brows pulled together. “Maddox…”

“Don’t,” he said, sharper than he meant. “Not right now.”

She stepped toward him anyway, slow and steady, like she was approaching a wounded animal that might bolt.

“You’re shutting me out.”

“I’m getting my head straight.”

“No,” she said softly. “You’re disappearing.”

His jaw clenched. “Sophia—”

She crossed the room, stopping right in front of him. Close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating off her. Close enough that he could smell the faint vanilla on her skin, the clean scent of her shampoo, the lingering trace of fear she was trying to hide.